Dinosaur Jr.

Rock trio Dinosaur Jr. is now two years into an unlikely reunion. But perhaps the most shocking aspect of it all was the group's strong new studio album Beyond, a record bassist Lou Barlow never fathomed.

"Oh god no!" Barlow says on the line from Chicago. "That was another surprise. It's been a whole series of surprises."

The trio, which performs tonight at the Phoenix Concert Theatre as part of this year's North by Northeast (NXNE), originally joined forces again in 2005 to tour behind reissues of earlier albums like Green Mind and Bug.

"The manager of the band was saying we had to do a new record," Barlow says. "We were like, 'Yeah, whatever.' But I think maybe his needling started making sense to J. (Mascis) and J. just decided to enlist me and (drummer) Murph for some of the demos he was working on or different song ideas.

"I really didn't know how we were going to do it," he continues. "I thought we had made it through the end of the reunion thing pretty well but for me making albums is generally a pretty intense process. It takes a lot of communication. It took a while but once we got into it, it started to come together."

While both Barlow and Mascis kept busy with other projects, the previous acrimony between the two made a reunion highly improbable. And while together again, the relationship now isn't exactly worthy of a Hallmark card.

"There wasn't too much tension but we didn't really do any active hatchet-burying," he says. "We just got on with it right away.

"There isn't as much ambivalence with J. or Murph, so it's easier for me to feel like we're all of the same mind about the band," he adds. "We all realize it was important but back in the day I think all of us sort of had one foot in it and one foot out of it in some way mentally or creatively."

The group has been playing eight cuts from Beyond live. And while it features nuggets like Pick Me Up, It's Me and Almost Ready, Barlow also contributed two songs including Back to Your Heart.

"I wanted it to be a song about moving away and following my heart and my wife and my girlfriend -- my girlfriend is now my wife -- and following her out to California," he says. "And to have a chorus that refers to coming back to Dinosaur too. They're not the greatest lyrics but I was after a certain feeling."

Dinosaur Jr., loyal disciples of Spinal Tap's Nigel Tufnel and his "one louder" philosophy, aren't saying whether another album is in the cards or not. A new DVD called Live in the Middle East came out but Barlow hasn't seen it. Barlow says the band will most likely still be touring a year from now in support of Beyond.

"I always wanted to be in a band that made a commitment to playing in Canada," Barlow says with a laugh. "We went all the way to Halifax (last year), which was pretty cool. It's so hard for people to take you seriously when you say, 'I want to play in Canada a lot.' They'll say, 'Okay, Toronto and Montreal.' You're like, 'No! I want to play in Canada.'"